Ford Capri: Autoerotica

Cars People

Bodie and Doyle fell in love via a Ford. But the curly one was a sexual predator before he got the gig..

If you’re of a certain age you’ll remember Martin Shaw for his fully permed, street smart, ex-cop incarnation – Ray Doyle – of Criminal Intelligence 5 fame.

Like me, you probably sat up with your Dad and watched the smooth Doyle and his hard case partner Bodie tearing around and tooled up in their respective Capris.

Bodie and Doyle

If all the above is true then it wouldn’t greatly surprise you to find that when Ford signed off on the world’s first three-minute TV commercial to launch the Mark II Capri, they chose Shaw as the frontman.

When you watch this piece of film you’re being transported back to the days when advertising budgets could feed small nations and when the Creative Directors of Ad agencies had more clout than Marky Mark Wahlberg has in Hollywood today.

This mini movie – set, we presume, somewhere in Provence – was directed by Adrian Lyne. He went on to make sexually charged blockbusters such as Fatal Attraction and 9 ½ weeks, and you can easily see this as the start of one of those stories. From the minute he picks her up you’re waiting for Shaw to stub out his ciggie and get the chick on the back seat.

The mini epic is shot through with the sort of predatory sexuality that’s almost Trumpian.

Them were the days, right?

But hold on. This ad got its primetime three minute slots in 1974 when Ray Doyle was still a Detective in the Met – and Shaw was mostly doing theatre work. Those Capri driving Professionals didn’t actually hit our screens until 1977.

Now is that shaman-like forward thinking by the Ford account admen, or an early case of automotive type casting for Martin Shaw?

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